Topic: Pioneer Square

Seattle cops, circa 1900, looked pretty spiffy. They wore high-collared shirts, heavy frock coats and tall helmets that not only helped them stand out in a crowd but conveniently stored their sandwiches. More interestingly, they didn’t carry handguns openly. They had to unbutton their coats to reach their pistols.

Jonny Taylor and Paola Gonzalez serve bags full of Rainier cherries from the Martin Family Orchards at this Pike Place Market stand. The warm colors of peaches and apricots contrast with a blanket of greens on the stall a few feet away, where Chai Cha, of the Shong Chao’s Farm, sells Swiss chard,…

Sketched June 20 and 26, 2013 All this time I’ve thought the closest national parks to Seattle were Mount Rainier, the North Cascades and the Olympics. But here’s one that is even closer: the Klondike Gold Rush National Park in Pioneer Square. Veteran park ranger Tim J. Karle said I’m not the only visitor who…

Sketched Jan. 23, 2013 Tour guide Rose Zeringer turns off the lights and points to a 120-year-old skylight above us: “This is how they lit up the underground before electricity.” The Underground Tour, created by Bill Speidel in 1965, is no staged production. You get to walk through the subterranean sidewalks and building spaces left behind…

You’ve seen the bronze bust of Chief Seattle in Pioneer Square. I’m pretty sure more than one sketcher must have drawn the real person back in the day. Wouldn’t it be great to see those drawings today? On the University of Washington Libraries digital collections website I found at least one drawing of…

Sketched Jan. 17 On Tuesday afternoon, as Seattle was bracing for today’s snowfall, I stumbled upon another tree-socks art installation by Suzanne Tidwell at Occidental Park. Tidwell is one of the Sammamish guerrilla knitters I sketched and wrote about last spring. The multi-colored tree-socks couldn’t be more fitting during these cold days we are having. At…

April 8, 12:07 p.m. [Click on sketches to view larger] Pioneer Square is not my usual stomping ground, but I could spend days walking around the historic district. Architectural gems from the late 19th century and early 20th century are hidden in plain view: walruses at the 1917 Arctic Building or this red terra-cotta…

I came to Elliott Bay Books when the news of their possible relocation first came out in October (see my post.) Now that their move to Capitol Hill is official — read this story by business reporter Melissa Allison — I returned on Sunday with my Seattle sketching friends to capture…

About Seattle Sketcher

Gabriel Campanario has been living and drawing in Seattle since '06. He's a Seattle Times artist, founder of Urban Sketchers nonprofit, Spaniard, husband and father. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.